


What They Broke, We Can Together Mend

by lynnenne



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, No Humanity Caroline Forbes, Non-Linear Narrative, Parent Caroline Forbes, Parent Klaus Mikaelson, Post-Canon Fix-It, antiquated dialogue, therapy as narrative device, young Hope Mikaelson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnenne/pseuds/lynnenne
Summary: She kisses him and the forest floor shakes, animals sprinting away from falling trees and wildfire. She is more than he imagined—voracious, fierce, ravenous. As if she has been starving for centuries and he is now the prey.She exacts bloody vengeance on him when she sinks her fangs into his neck, burning and deep, and he lets her take everything.He is not poisoned by her bite. But he might as well be.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	What They Broke, We Can Together Mend

**Author's Note:**

> Follows canon up until the end of The Originals S4, then takes a different direction. Klaus character study.

After Kol is murdered (the first time), Klaus remembers the starling pendant his mother gifted him as a child. She promised that its magic would keep Niklaus safe, summoning her to his side anytime he clasped the silver bird. He kept the pendant for nearly a thousand years, finally giving it to Marcel when he was a boy, as a symbol of kinship and affection. 

Klaus reflects on this as he languishes in Elena’s living room, trapped there by a barrier spell that Bonnie made especially for him. He looks at his brother’s charred, burnt corpse lying on the Gilberts’ kitchen floor, and wishes he had the starling pendant in his hand; wishes he had a mother to comfort him.

Klaus hasn’t longed for his mother since the day he killed her.

*

“You are not even worth the calories I burn talking to you,” Caroline tells him, and blood fills his vision. He impales her on a coat rack, yanks her across Bonnie’s magical barrier and plunges his teeth into her neck. Her blood fills his mouth as his venom fills her veins and he’s hard and angry everywhere, pulling her body tight against his, arms vice-like around her back, hands clutching her as she struggles.

He wants to rip out her heart with his teeth.

Instead he drops her to the floor. “Now that was definitely worth the calories,” he quips, and Tyler races over to Caroline’s prone form and vamps her to safety. Tyler begs Klaus to heal her but he has no wish to grant mercy. The only thing he wishes is to drink her down again.

“I know you’re in love with me,” Caroline whispers later as she lies on the couch, poisoned by his bite. Klaus looks at the festering wound on her neck, the sweat on her brow, the way her eyes can barely stay open, and knows that other people—less broken people—would show their love quite differently.

It’s only when she’s dying in front of him that he decides to save her. He can’t bear the way his heart is breaking.

*

Caroline does not forgive him, and Klaus does not apologize—at least, not with words. But he gifts her with a regal gown for prom and abandons his pursuit of Tyler and attends her graduation (with mini-fridge) and even provides a vial of his blood to cure Damon’s wolf bite.

He cannot fathom, however, why Caroline wants to help Damon, of all people. Klaus has eyes everywhere; he had them in Mystic Falls long before he arrived. He is well aware of Damon’s crimes against Caroline.

“How can you simply forgive him?” Klaus asks, as he escorts her off the football field.

“Oh, I haven’t forgiven him,” she vows. “I’m still super-pissed. But Damon is dating my best friend, and Stefan is his brother, so I’m just... calling a truce.”

“Why must you be the one to wave the white flag?”

“I don't _have_ to, I'm _choosing_ to. If I want to set Damon on fire, I will. I still might, by the way. And if I want to be merciful, that’s my choice, too.”

“Mercy is for the weak,” Klaus intones, a mantra beaten into him by his father. 

“Did you seriously just quote _The Karate Kid_ at me?”

“What?”

“Forget it. My point is, anger doesn’t always have to lead to bloody vengeance. I mean, I’m still angry at you for biting me with your poison hybrid teeth, but you and I are still…” She trails off.

“We are still…?” he prompts.

“We’re immortal,” she deflects. “And the idea of holding a grudge for the rest of forever just sounds... really exhausting.” 

Klaus marvels at how big Caroline’s heart is. He wonders what it feels like, to have one that has not been shattered since memory began.

“For what it’s worth… I am sorry for hurting you, Caroline.”

She smiles. “Apology accepted.” 

*

Caroline is correct. Holding a grudge forever is exhausting. But Klaus has never learned how to let one go, hence, his return to Mystic Falls when he learns that Katerina is dying.

He’s nearly upon the Salvatore house when he overhears Caroline chatting with Bonnie and Jeremy.

“How am I the only person on the planet who’s not having scandalous sex?” she asks, and a predator's smile spreads over his face.

He tracks Caroline into the woods, hybrid senses laden with the smell of pine and the sounds of hidden creatures underfoot. When he finds her, she breathes his name, and he can taste her desire in the air between them.

He extracts the truth from her with a wolf’s grin and a promise of freedom. She kisses him and the forest floor shakes, animals sprinting away from falling trees and wildfire. She is more than he imagined—voracious, fierce, ravenous. As if she has been starving for centuries and he is now the prey.

She exacts bloody vengeance on him when she sinks her fangs into his neck, burning and deep, and he lets her take everything.

He is not poisoned by her bite. But he might as well be.

*

In the beginning, before the blood hunger, Niklaus gives his heart too easily. He carves it into wooden knights for Rebekah, lays it bare on his face as Elijah teaches him to use the bow, shares secret smiles with Henrik as they stay out late to watch the full moon rise. He wears it around his neck in the form of his mother’s starling pendant. Shining and brave, yet never quite taking flight.

He would happily hand his heart to his father, but Mikael would rather rip it out of his chest instead. 

(His heart beats daily and is beaten daily, a bird with wings broken and shattered.)

In time, he stops giving his heart to anyone. He feels weak for ever offering.

*

“It’s a natural instinct,” Camille will tell him. “Love is an essential need for children—as vital as food and safety.”

Food, Mikael provided. Safety, Esther saw as her clandestine duty. The starling necklace was not a symbol of love for her bastard son. It was a deception: a talisman meant to keep him weak, so that he would not kill his father (or anyone) and trigger his werewolf gene.

Esther sought to protect the secret of her betrayal from her husband. She never sought to protect Niklaus from him. Only his siblings ever tried.

He learns to love them instead.

*

Klaus wants better for his own child. But "better" is much changed between his days with Marcel and the day of Hope's birth. A hundred years ago, it meant a place at the top of the New Orleans food chain and his blessing for Marcel and Rebekah to be happy. It did not mean therapy. He might be plotting to take over the city’s supernatural underworld, but he is not Tony Soprano.

Klaus has had a thousand years (a thousand lifetimes) for reflection, and he is far more self-aware than most would credit him with. But knowing yourself is one thing. Knowing how to _fix_ yourself is something else again.

“He doesn’t feel safe, and doesn’t know what to do about it,” Camille observes on the night they meet. Klaus knows at that moment that she can help him.

*

After the blood, Niklaus hands his heart to a red-haired beauty who is as damaged as he is. He trusts her with his darkest secrets, and she shreds him as recklessly as Mikael did.

It unleashes a beast inside him, more cruel and terrible than his father. Klaus’s pain and rage consume him for the next millennium, and he blames Aurora, Mikael, Esther, his siblings—anyone who ever has or ever will hurt him. Bloody vengeance becomes his strength. Mercy is for the weak.

In hindsight, Klaus can admit that Elijah did him a favour, when he compelled Aurora to spurn him. She is frozen in time as a child. And Klaus would never, in a thousand lifetimes, trust her with his own.

*

Caroline shows up in New Orleans one day with glitter on her eyes and flesh between her teeth, and Klaus knows immediately what she has done. He also knows why; he sent flowers after Liz died.

“You’re taking me dancing,” she commands as she grabs his hand and leads him out into the night. They find a club with annoying music and even more annoying patrons, and slaughter their way through the crowd. Caroline is glorious with strobe lights in her hair, and he relishes seeing her like this (like him), vicious and violent. She licks a spray of blood from his face and he pulls her into a searing kiss. They fuck on the floor and on top of bodies. When they hear police sirens, they flash to a nearby park and do it all again.

Later, they lie in the grass staring up at the night sky, as if heaven were something promised to creatures like them. 

“I heard Hayley is queen of the werewolves now.” Caroline scoffs. “She was always a queen bitch to me, it suits her.”

Klaus chuckles. “And what about you?” He traces down her arm, across her bare belly. Caroline _hmmms_ in response. “Have you taken over the world yet?”

“Nooo, that’s your evil plan, not mine.” She bats her eyes at him and asks, “How’s daddyhood?” and it’s not so much a question as a dare.

Klaus’s face shuts down. Caroline’s teeth gleam silver in the moonlight.

“This has been a fun evening, sweetheart,” he says, with one last kiss. “But I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Caroline sighs dramatically. “Where have I heard that before?” She stands and pulls on her clothes. He opts to stay on the ground and admire the view. 

“I’ll say hi to Stefan for you,” she says, apropo of nothing, and for half a second, her face is the old Caroline. “He’d never admit it, but I think he kind of misses you.”

“So do you, love.” Klaus smirks. “You'd never admit it, either.”

Caroline gives him the finger, and Klaus laughs. Then with a whoosh, she’s gone.

Her no-humanity spree does not last long, but Klaus hears that she and Ripper went on quite the murderous rampage together. He is irrationally jealous.

Klaus misses them both. Misses himself sometimes, the demon he used to be—before his heart started walking around outside of his chest.

*

He kills all of his parents (again, for the nth time, he’s honestly lost count) in defense of his daughter. Killing Mikael is somehow less satisfying this time around. He talks about it with Camille—how hurtful Mikael’s loathing still is, how unsatisfying his reasons. 

“I asked him why he always despised me,” Klaus confides. “He said he didn’t know.”

“What do you think the reason is?” Camille asks.

Klaus considers the insults that Mikael hurled at him over the centuries, during their endless cycle of fight-and-flee. _Angry. Arrogant. Impulsive. A beast._

“I think he hated me,” he says, “because I was too much like him.”

(Cami doesn’t say, “You’re terrified your daughter will be too much like you.” It's the whole reason he's here.)

*

Caroline calls him a few times for parenting advice, in the first few weeks after the twins are born. He tells her which lullabies Hope likes the best, which toys soothe her the most, how she likes it when Klaus strokes the nape of her neck as she falls asleep on his shoulder. 

“A word of advice, love. If Alaric someday decides to run off with your children, do not turn him into a werewolf 24/7.”

“ _What_ are you talking about?”

“Just that it’s a mistake to deprive a child of a loving parent. I can admit that now, never having known one myself.”

“Okay, I am not even going to try to decipher that. I’m sure you’ve invented a zillion new fun and exciting ways to make Hayley’s life a living hell.” Klaus chuckles. 

Caroline tells him about her idea to start a boarding school for supernatural children, a place where the twins can learn to control their magic and grow up with others like them. Klaus makes a generous offer of funding, anticipating that Hope can attend when she reaches school age. In his more wistful moments, he imagines them all as a family, he and Caroline, raising their little witches together.

But there is Stefan and Cami and a looming prophecy to deal with. And by the time Caroline arrives in New Orleans with her girls in tow, Klaus is chained and buried in a dungeon that his erstwhile son built especially for him.

*

Years later, he opens the door to find Damon Salvatore, of all people, standing before him with a bottle of bourbon in hand.

“I don’t like you,” are the first words out of his mouth, as he sways on his feet. “And you don’t like me. But it’s the anniversary of Stefan’s _incredibly stupid_ death, and I wanna get drunk with someone who remembers what a stupid fucking _dumbass_ he was.”

Well. How can he resist an invitation like that? “You don’t look like you need much help with the getting drunk part,” Klaus drawls, but he takes the bourbon and follows as Damon staggers to the nearest bar.

“To his stupid hair,” Damon says, raising his glass.

“To his love of the kill,” Klaus grins wickedly.

They trade toasts in honour of Stefan’s martyr complex, his cars, his repeatedly falling off the blood wagon, his friendship with Lexi who always got him back on it.

“To his widow,” Klaus braves, after one too many.

Damon drinks, and he’s quiet for a moment. “I was a total dick to her,” he confesses, “back when I was a vampire and she wasn’t.”

“I’m aware,” Klaus snarls. He pours himself another drink to keep his hands busy, in lieu of ripping Damon’s head off. 

“I did so many shitty things back then. Never bothered me. But I feel _bad_ about how I treated Caroline.” Damon’s face twists, as if he’s stunned by the revelation. “Think if I apologized she’d forgive me?”

“No.”

Damon nods and keeps drinking. They both know when they deserve forgiveness, which is hardly ever.

“You know,” Klaus snarls, pointing his finger at Damon like an accusation, “Stefan promised me that he would do right by Caroline. Instead he sacrificed himself to save your useless hide.”

Damon scoffs. “Like you wouldn’t do the same,” he counters.

“You’re mistaking me for my brother.”

“Bullshit.” Damon slams his glass on the table. “Someday you’re gonna throw yourself on a stake for Elijah just like Stefan did for me.”

Klaus looks down into his glass. “Not for Elijah.”

Damon gives him a long look. They haven’t discussed it, but Klaus knows that Elena and Damon are expecting their first child.

“For Hope,” Damon surmises, and then shrugs in agreement. “Suppose any parent would do the same. Except, you know, ours.” They clink their glasses together, toasting the deaths of abusive fathers and loveless mothers.

Caroline would understand, if Klaus sacrificed himself for Hope. But—

“Think she’d forgive you?” Damon wonders.

Klaus downs the rest of his drink. “No.”

*

“I don’t trust anyone,” Klaus tells Lucien when he first blows into town. He tells Cami the same, during one of their sessions, but she argues the point.

“You have a short list,” she says. “Let’s talk about them.” Klaus glares at her and says nothing. “Fine,” she huffs. “I’ll start. You trusted Rebekah to take care of Hope.”

“Rebekah gives her heart too easily,” he grumbles. 

“Like you did, when you were a boy.” 

“Yes, and like me, it has nearly gotten her killed. Nearly gotten all of us killed,” he snaps, remembering Alexander.

He is childishly, churlishly jealous of his sister’s ability to love so easily. To trust those she loves when she should not. Even (especially) Klaus himself.

Cami moves on. “You trust Elijah,” and most of the time, he does. He has even learned to trust Freya, as paranoid as he was when she first materialized—promising to save Hope from yet another resurrected parental figure wholly lacking in parenting skills.

“And Hayley.”

“Hayley would kill to protect our child,” Klaus declares. “She would die for Hope. Did, in fact.”

He recalls how lost he felt after Hayley gave birth, cradling her lifeless body in his lap, the two of them splayed at the foot of a church altar in a blood-soaked pieta. He remembers how fearsome she looked in the graveyard, Mother Mary and Nemesis all at once, resurrected by her own child’s blood and out for vengeance.

“What about Marcel?” Cami asks.

Klaus evades the question. “Marcel trusted me, when he was a boy.” 

“And you broke that trust.” He doesn’t deny it. “Are you worried you might repeat the same mistakes with Hope?”

“Why else do you think I’m doing this?” he growls, sweeping his arm over the couch, the room, the whole ridiculous bloody enterprise.

“Good question,” Cami retorts in that maddening, reasonable way she has. “You could just as easily go buy a parenting book. So.” She leans forward. “Why are you here, Klaus?”

He does not answer, but he knows: he feels safe enough with Camille to divulge his darkest secrets, for the first time in a thousand years.

*

He trusts Cami implicitly—right up until the moment she steals the one weapon on earth that can kill him. After that, he can only confess that he loves her when she’s dying and can never again break his heart.

*

They all come to him, in the dark days inside Marcel’s dungeon, while Papa Tunde’s knife tunnels through his flesh. Aurora with her mad giggle. Cami with her wisdom and regrets. Hayley, holding their daughter in her arms. Klaus wonders what Hope looks like now that she’s three, four, five—eventually he loses track of the years. He misses her with every breath of dank, stale air; with every agonizing thump of his heart against the tip of Tunde’s blade.

Only Caroline is changeable, different every time she appears (he never could control her, which both charms and infuriates him). Sometimes she is stunning yet hostile in the gown he gifted her, so many years ago. Sometimes witty and warm, her smile brilliant as jewels in a pageant tiara on a sunny afternoon. Sometimes dangerous and razor-sharp, ripping out throats with her teeth, a spray of blood taking flight like a flock of starlings.

Until they plummet to the ground in a rain of red.

*

Years later, Hope sees the same spray of blood with terrified eyes, interrupting her father as he rips apart his enemies (his victims). And Klaus watches her heart plummet to the ground like a bird shot out of the sky.

*

Klaus has spent nearly all of Hope’s childhood away from her, trapped in dungeons or infected with deadly magic. He has called and written and even learned how to use Zoom, but he hadn’t counted on a 9-year-old mastering astral projection.

“Why have you stopped calling her?” Hayley berates him over the phone. “And don’t give me that she’s-better-off-without-me bullshit. Talk.”

But Klaus cannot give voice to the shame inside him, as cutting as Tunde’s blade. For one appalling moment, his daughter saw the truth of who he is—and Klaus has been hiding that from everyone since the day he first murdered his mother.

Hayley growls at his silence. “I swear, Klaus, if you won’t tell me what happened between you and Hope, I’ll find someone to torture it out of you.”

Klaus thinks she’s joking, until Caroline shows up and slams his face into the ground.

*

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Caroline is angrier than Klaus has ever seen, a mama bear more dangerous than any immortal hybrid. “We had to send Hope home from school because she spent every day in her room, crying.”

Klaus spits out a mouthful of blood. He thinks Caroline might have broken his teeth.

“What did you do?” Caroline shouts.

He stands, mulish and tight-lipped. Hurls insults at her, shoves her aside, attempts to walk out, even tries to break her neck. Caroline is having none of it. “Listen, buddy, I have twin girls who just last week turned their teddy bears into literal fire-breathing dragons. So if you think _you_ can test my patience?” She shoves a finger into his chest. “You’re an _amateur_.”

She drags the story out of him in sentence fragments. Spell. Astral. Blood, death, gore. Hope screaming. He cannot stop hearing her screams.

Caroline’s mind starts to whir, and Klaus can see her assembling the pieces, moving them around on her mental chess board until a strategy reveals itself. Her face shows the exact moment when she solves the game. It is perhaps the most fearsome thing he’s ever seen.

“You’re an idiot,” she says finally, and grabs his hand. “Come with me.” It’s an order, not an appeal. For once, Klaus obeys.

*

Klaus cannot go back to New Orleans while Hope is there. Instead, Caroline takes him to the Salvatore School. Most of Hope’s things are still in her room. Caroline drags him inside, and her posture instantly softens, mama bear to den mother. 

“This is a spell book she’s writing with Josie.” Caroline picks up the notebook and thumbs through the pages. Klaus looks over her shoulder. He sees the astral projection spell Hope used when she interrupted his murder spree. A protection spell that Freya crafted for her. Finally, Caroline settles on the starling spell that Esther had used to weaken Niklaus in secret—the one that left him defenseless against the beast he called father.

He reaches over Caroline’s shoulder and gently pries the grimoire out of her hand. Looks hard at the page, reading through the magic. “She changed it,” he muses. Klaus knows just enough about magic to understand the ingredients, but not what they create. “What does it do?” He looks Caroline in the eye.

“It’s supposed to fix broken hearts,” Caroline replies. “She’s making it for you.”

Klaus needs to sit, or he will crumple to his knees.

Caroline sits next to him on Hope’s narrow bed, voice like a lullaby. “I get it, Klaus. I can’t imagine anything more heartbreaking than being kept away from your child all these years. To not be able to hold her, and watch her grow up? Or paint watercolors together? Or… yell at her for setting the curtains on fire?”

Caroline is weeping. They both are.

“She misses you, so much. And she knows how much you miss her. And yes, she’s confused and scared about what she saw, and you _are_ going to explain it to her. But she’s not going to stop loving you.”

Klaus takes a breath and voices his darkest fear. “What if she does?” he whispers.

Caroline takes his hand and smiles. “I didn’t.”

He stares at her, stunned.

“Caroline,” he breathes, and she leans in to kiss him. Klaus can feel pieces of his heart unfolding, tiny bird bones knitting themselves back together. He wraps his arms around her, pulls her in close, revels in the warmth of her skin, the press of her body against his. Kisses her like heartbreak, like magic, like flying.

Then a mortifying thought strikes. “This is Hope’s bed?”

Caroline’s face scrunches up. “Yeah, we should probably—”

“Definitely, yes,” he agrees, and they vamp off to Caroline’s bedroom for a proper reunion.

*

His next virtual meeting with Hope is more painful and chastening than any therapy session. She is so innocent, so _happy._ How can he explain that her father is the villain of a thousand stories?

“I am sorry about what you saw, sweetheart,” he begins. “I know it was frightening for you. And I am sorry that I didn’t handle it well.”

Hope nods. Her face is nervous yet brave. She has always been so very brave.

“You know that your Uncle Elijah does not remember us?” She nods again. “There are people who want to hurt him, people whom he would not even recognize if they approached him. I wanted to keep him safe, so I…” Humiliation weighs deep in his throat. “The reason I hurt those people, is so they would not hurt him.”

Hope tilts her head. “Soooo… those people were like, the bad guys.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“And you fight the bad guys.” 

Off camera, Caroline smothers a laugh.

“I fight, to keep my family safe. I will always protect you, Hope. I love you, and I would never want anyone to hurt you. I'm so sorry, if I did.”

Hope is silent. She is a clever girl, and a powerful witch. She will hear more stories soon enough, and Klaus cannot whitewash the centuries of violence and suffering he has inflicted in the name of family and power and bloody vengeance. Hope may well not forgive him, as she gets older. But he will keep trying to do better, because of something he told her when the Hollow came for her: he wishes to be worthy of being her father.

“Dad?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I made something for you.” She shows him the starling necklace, newly spelled to ease the pain of broken hearts. “I’m making one for Mom, too. She’s been sad since Uncle Elijah went away.” 

Klaus longs to wrap his hands around her small fists and press the pendant into her palms. “You keep it, love,” he smiles. “You are my heart. So long as you are safe and happy, then so shall I be.”

“You talk funny sometimes,” she teases, and Klaus laughs. 

“Well, I am ancient,” he replies, “and it is difficult to change at my age. But not impossible.”

*

Hope returns to the Salvatore School, and Klaus leaves Mystic Falls. Not because of the Hollow’s magic. Not because of his long-ago promise to Caroline that he would never return. Certainly not because Alaric shoots him with a crossbow anytime he sets foot on school property.

Truth be told, Klaus does not wish to go back to the place of his birth, even with the delectable promise of Caroline as incentive. He left behind the boy he was a thousand years (a thousand lifetimes) ago, and he has no wish to revisit the site of his original heartbreak.

(Also, if he stays in Mystic Falls, there is an excellent chance he will end up tearing Damon limb from limb, starting with his dick. But Caroline made him promise to leave Damon’s extremities intact, because “Stefan died so his stupid brother could live a stupid human life with Elena, and I’m not going to let his sacrifice be for nothing.”) 

Caroline travels the world, seeking a way out of the merge for her girls. She also has a new goal on her sprawling to-do list: finding a way to remove and destroy the Hollow’s magic, so the Mikaelson clan can be reunited. She extracts promises of help from Freya, Kol, Vincent, even Bonnie and Davina—both of whom still loathe him, but Caroline, being Caroline, sweet-talked them into joining the team. Klaus has every confidence that they will one day solve the game.

He joins Caroline on her travels as often as he can. When they’re not working, they play: romantic dinners, dancing, music, scandalous sex. And if, along the way, Klaus needs to threaten a few witches or behead a few vampires to keep his family safe (including her)—well, she does not exactly give him carte blanche. But she does not stop loving him, either.

For that, Klaus wishes to give her everything. Even the part of himself that still beats daily, and mends a little more each day.


End file.
